Labour’s got talent but Mudie matters

MP breaks ranks to pile pressure on Miliband.

Last week’s most significant moment at Westminster was not the creation of another 30 peers that just makes a bad situation in the Lords worse.

It wasn’t the furore over Home Office posters telling illegal immigrants to go home that doesn’t really seem very controversial.

It was a radio interview with a fairly anonymous Labour backbencher, George Mudie.

Mudie is a former whip who’s now a senior member of the Treasury Select Committee so not a rebel, a headbanger or one of the usual suspects.

But he was willing to go on air to question Ed Miliband’s leadership. He said he spoke for many backbenchers in being confused about where the party stood and what its policies are.

He didn’t trash Miliband, he accused him only of being tentative rather than terrible, and his critique was all the more devastating for it.

He’s the first MP to break ranks.

Up till now the Labour party has been remarkably united. Usually a party that was defeated in the way Labour were in 2010 splits and squabbles. Ed Miliband’s Labour has not done that.

But, as the economy has turned a corner and the Tories have started to get bullish about the next election, so whispers have begun to be heard and cracks have appeared in the Labour faade.

Coups always occur when the leader is abroad. Miliband has been in France on holiday when he should have been setting the agenda. And with both Houses of Parliament now in recess the agenda is there to be set.

Like an episode of political X Factor, weirdos and attention seekers tried and failed to seize the limelight.

Nick Clegg, never needing much persuasion to duck out of summer in Spain with his in-laws, briefly surfaced for a press conference that was well-timed but empty.

Lord Howell, whose son-in-law George Osborne happens to be the only man in Britain with a sneer to rival Simon Cowell’s, got attention for suggesting fracking the controversial method of extracting shale gas should take place in the “desolate” north east rather than his leafy backyard of the London commuter belt.

Two problems with this statement. First, the north east is not desolate and, second, there isn’t any shale gas there.

Lord Howell then broke the first law of fracking when you’re in too deep, stop digging by claiming he’d meant to say north west. Thereby offending twice as many people in one fell swoop.

Tory party chairman Grant Shapps made a speech on Wednesday which the party promised would set the agenda.

Instead he gave a bizarre address in which he painted a picture of what Britain would be like should Labour win in 2015.

He may have lifted the description straight from the Harry Potter books when Lord Voldemort is causing chaos, with trade union boss Len McCluskey standing in for the Dark Lord in the Shapps version. He also confessed he drops his keys a lot when trying to get into his own house.

These episodes, from the pathetic to the potty, proved there’s been a political vacuum.

But the gap in the market for a political star has not been all bad for Labour as one of their MPs showed she has the X Factor.

Stella Creasy is known for her campaign to stamp out illegal loan sharks and payday loan firms. Last week she stood up in the argument over online abuse, particularly the vile comments aimed at women on Twitter.

She found herself pitted against male commentators online and on TV. And she wiped the floor with every single one of them not just with clever arguments she has a PhD in psychology but by sheer force of personality.

She deploys jokes, references indie bands, and speaks the language used in her Walthamstow constituency.

Creasy proved Labour’s got talent.

If he’s really serious about winning in 2015, Miliband must harness this talent.